The Challenges That Children Face Due to Unhealthy Family Relationship

Family
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Family
What do people pursue to have the best relationship? The family gives the right values and lessons that a person learns in life. Moreover, when a child is born, he or she receives much love and experience much happiness with the family. Irrespective of the importance of family, many teenagers complain about the high intolerable characters of their family members and strive to seek refuge with their friends, and want to remain independent from the control of their parents (Rothblum & Snoek, 1978). Through a conversation with Gallien in "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, Alex noted that people strive to leave families and choose their independent lives. Alex spoke to Gallien and said, "I won't run into anything I can't deal with on my own. "Separately, Gallien said, "There was just no talking the guy out of it…He was determined" as he reflected the decision of Alex to leave his family (Krakauer, 1992, p. 15). Adolescent disclosure and their strong bond to parents depend on strong family affection, a strong foundation in marriage, and honesty of the parent to their children. Thus, the discussion here elaborates the causes of family breakups, dwindling relationships in the family and its development to the lonely attitude among children based on Chris McCandless in "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer.

Causes of Family Breakups

A poor relationship in a family promotes a negative attitude in adolescent children. The adolescent stage is the period of physical and emotional change for teenage children as they transit to adulthood. The stage is a confusing journey where the teenagers make discoveries to achieve self-identification due to the mixture of raging hormones, physical changes, and unfettered emotional change. Biological maturation controls the stage in the human life cycle. Hence, teenagers find it overwhelming to manage without the support of family. Changes in family relationships are on the rise in the resent times, including rising cohabitation, divorce, and second marriages. Such activities result in the formation of stepfamilies, extended, cohabiting, matriarchal, patriarchal, lone parent and adopted families, gay and lesbian families coupled with changes in parents' behavior towards their children, among others. According to Krakauer (1992) on Into the wild, the character McCandless and his family had a cold relationship with him, realizing that his parents were irrational, insulting, disrespectful, and oppressive to the point of disappointing him. Thus, he decided to take an independent lifestyle and move far away to Alaska. McCandless said, "Since they won't ever take me seriously, for a few months after graduation I'm going to let them think they are right…, And then, once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to knock them out of my life completely" (p. 65).

Dwindling Relationships in the Family

The different changes in family setups lead to family breakdown hence poor care of teenage children, loss of parental love, and high rates of loneliness. Massey (1999) affirmed that poor relationship in the family leads to adolescent developing a negative attitude towards parents on her article about the "Family Rel...